Showing posts with label DRS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DRS. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 February 2015

A quick look at the DRS rule with hawkeye and lbw

There is a significant issue with the way that hawkeye is used for DRS.

There is some doubt as to the exact position of the ball when captured on camera. It's only accurate to the nearest 2mm or so. While that's very accurate, once it's used to create a model, it can be dangerous. As a result there is a margin for error. Then there can be difficulty determining exactly where the ball hits the pad, especially where it brushes the front pad on the way to the second. This means that there is some doubt as to what the actual position of the ball is.

To overcome this, the ICC have ruled that more than half of the ball needs to hit the centre of the wicket. This is a user friendly option at first glance. The boundary is really clear, and the batsman needs to be clearly out in order to be given out. But near the boundaries there are occasionally situations where the ball is clearly going to hit, but instead the hawkeye system calls the ball "umpires call."

This is particularly ridiculous when the ball has hit the batsman on the back foot. In a situation where the ball has only an extra 40cm to travel, if the middle of the ball is just outside the middle of the stump then for the ball to miss the stumps, then the model would have to be out by 5.5 cm. On a distance of travel of 40cm that's allowing way too much margin for error (realistically there would be a significantly less than 1% chance of the ball missing the stumps).

A solution would be to look at a cone that was using a realistic model for the uncertainty. That would be more sensible for the commentators, fans and players to understand, and would actually provide a more sensible answer to the question "would the ball hit the stumps?"

I've put together a short video to demonstrate what I mean as well.



Friday, 2 August 2013

A terrible decision

Anyone who is an opponent of DRS has just got a whole lot of ammo. The problem is not the system (in my opinion) it's the implementation. The idea that there needs to be clear evidence to overturn a decision is fine, but I genuinely think that the decision to give Usman Khawaja out was appalling.

International cricketers need to be careful about how they talk about umpires, but Jimmy Neesham didn't hold back, with this tweet:

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Mini-session Analysis 1st Ashes Test, Trent Bridge, 2013

Here is the final mini-session analysis for the first test between England and Australia at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England

A mini-session is (normally) half a session, either between the start of the session and the drinks break or the drinks break and the end of the session. Occasionally a long session will have 3 mini-sessions where it will be broken up with 2 drinks breaks.